


The Kavanaugh Kidnappings

by Mighty_Meerkat



Category: Hitman (Video Games), Hitman: Absolution
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Gen, Kidnapping, Murder, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28539606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mighty_Meerkat/pseuds/Mighty_Meerkat
Summary: Victoria has lost count of the amount of times someone has tried to kidnap her. In fact, she's starting to get a little sick of it.(An attempt at a backstory for one of Absolution's most underutilized characters, as well as an explanation as to what she might be up to during the events of the current trilogy)
Kudos: 20





	The Kavanaugh Kidnappings

The first attempt she remembers happens when she is six years old.  
It’s the evening of her first grade Parent-Teacher conference, and Victoria Kavanaugh is sitting in between her parents as Mrs Kowalski tells them how well she’s doing in all her lessons: reading at an advanced level, showing good potential in sport, enjoying her role in the end-of-term play. She could do with talking to the other children a little more, and of course, there was the incident where Mrs Kowalski lost track of her and found her innocently wandering through the fire exit, but at her age, even the best-behaved children have little slip-ups. All in all, she says, Victoria is doing very well, and looks set to go through St. Edmund’s with a glowing record. Mr and Mrs Kavanaugh have done an excellent job. And – here Mrs Kowalski lowers her voice – it really is wonderful, what they did.

Afterwards, while the Kavanaughs are walking down the street, occasionally pausing so that Victoria can swing herself forward on their arms, she asks, “Why don’t I look like you?”.  
“What do you mean, sweetie?” replies her father, hesitantly.  
“Well…” Victoria takes a deep breath and lets it all come out at once, “I was looking at the other kids, and their families, and they’ve all got the same hair and eyes as their parents. But you’ve got blond hair and grey eyes, Daddy, and Mommy has black hair and brown eyes, and I’ve got brown hair and green eyes. Why don’t I look like you?”  
And so Victoria’s parents explain adoption to her, and how they wanted her so very much, and that she is their daughter just as much as if Mommy gave birth to her. But the nice lady who did give birth to her might one day want to keep in touch with her, and that’s why Victoria can never take her necklace off.  
All of this settles quite comfortably in Victoria’s mind – six-year-olds are, after all, quite emotionally resilient – and by the time they’ve reached home, she’s back to skipping again. That’s when the Kavanaugh family are greeted by a man – slightly portly, with a bristly moustache hanging over a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.  
“Hey there, my little spring-cleaner,” he smiles at Victoria, who shrinks back from this unwanted attention. Her mother is staring coldly at the stranger.  
“Bernard,” she says, not breaking her gaze away, “Why don’t you take Victoria inside to make the chili while Mr Travis and I talk?”

Inside the house, Victoria is soon busy fetching and carrying spices and cans for the chili, but as she rootles around the back of the cupboard for the last of the kidney beans, she can just about hear her mother and Mr Travis talking outside. The conversation doesn’t seem to be going well.  
“…six years old! How could you possibly think…”  
“…wouldn’t be anything like…mostly simple recon jobs, maybe a couple of thefts…little schoolgirl thing she’s got going on…”  
“…school uniform!...a child! Not everything is some sick little gimmick…nuns!”  
Soon after, Mr Travis leaves, and the Kavanaughs eat their chili. Victoria is curious about him, but decides that one awkward question is enough for the day and leaves it at that.   
She forgets all about him for quite some time. She’ll regret that later.

The second time, Victoria is in her teens. It’s the last day of school before the holidays, and all of final period English has been spent watching the 1990s version of Romeo + Juliet before the class study it next term. Victoria finds herself immune to Leonardo DiCaprio’s doe-eyed declarations of love and Clare Danes’ winning smile, but she’s mildly interested in how the director has translated the fight scenes to work with guns. At any rate, what she’s really looking forward to is the camping trip her parents have promised to take her on. It’s not often that either of them gets time off nowadays.  
Victoria’s so preoccupied with thoughts of the camping trip that she’s already on the street she lives when she notices an unusual number of black SUVs parked around the neighborhood. And it’s so quiet.  
Before she knows what she’s doing, the compass from her math kit is clutched in her hand.  
The front door is ajar – it’s been forced open, and as she pushes it further she sees them.  
Her parents, spreadeagled on the stairs, blood spilling from the two neat holes in their foreheads.   
And that brief moment of shock before something deep inside Victoria kicks into action is all it takes for her to feel the sharp sting of a needle go into her neck.  
As she falls face-forward onto the floor, she hears a woman’s voice saying “Sir, this is sick!”  
“It’s a necessary evil, Jade,” comes the voice from all those years ago, “Gives the kid a tragic backstory, toughens her up a bit. Let’s get this place cleaned up, get her out of here. Phase Two of Project ViKa is finally in operation.”

Victoria doesn’t remember much of what happens next. Doesn’t want to, either.

That’s not entirely true. There are a handful of good memories.

Diana sitting across from her at that gigantic dining table as she wolfs down a gigantic meal and commenting dryly that that’s another thing Victoria and her colleague have in common.

The nuns at Rosewood occasionally letting her sit in with them and watch trashy TV, as the oldest child in their care.

And finally, when it’s all over, and she’s taking the elevator down Blackwater Park with…the man, he turns to her and says “I saw the bodies. You handled yourself impressively. But you shouldn’t have had to.”

It’s the most he’s ever said to her. As Victoria nods, she thinks back to that rooftop, and realises that whilst she could never say she enjoyed killing those men…after spending so long in a tranquilized haze, being pushed from one bad situation to another? Having something she knew instinctively to do – kick here, shoot there, dodge him – it felt…

Afterwards, at the new safehouse with Diana, who is miraculously alive if currently on bedrest and hooked to a blood drip, Victoria learns the truth about her birth – her creation – in a more sensitive manner. She is the result of Project ViKa, an experiment into genetic manipulation with a view to creating the perfect assassin, primarily funded by one Benjamin Travis, then a rising star at the International Contract Agency. The project took heavy inspiration from the revolutionary Ort-Meyer experiments of the 1960s, but with some key adjustments. For one, it was felt that a short female subject would be more inconspicuous than the tall male clones of the original project. For another, the subject was to receive a more natural childhood, the better to make her blend in with her targets. And finally, the subject – Victoria – was to be kept dependant on an isotope inside her necklace, to decrease the chance of any rebellion.

It’s a lot to take in, no matter how gently it’s phrased.

Diana reassures her that whatever she chooses to do will be the right choice, so long as it’s hers. She comes close to throwing the necklace in the sea a few times. She looks down over the balcony, her heart in her hand, and thinks that she never wants to feel a weapon there again, never wants to look into the fading eyes of another nameless henchman. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone ever again.

She also doesn’t want to be hurt.

She puts the necklace back on and walks away from the balcony.

Dr Pasternak is part of a group of psychiatrists that work with the Agency but aren’t directly employed by them, for a certain measure of doctor-patient confidentiality. The man – Mr 47 – apparently sees one of his colleagues via a video call once a month for a check-up. It’s a funny thing, Victoria thinks, for the Agency to be invested in the mental wellbeing of the people they pay to kill other people, but in its own way, it makes complete sense. And Dr Pasternak is surprisingly kind and insightful, and helps Victoria think about plans for her future, and how she can get the most out of life whilst still retaining a degree of anonymity.

She attends college, majors in psychology, and does well, but not well enough to be headhunted by any facilities or companies. Instead, she manages to wangle herself a decent enough entry-level position at a small branch of Hamilton-Lowe, and blends in happily enough as a rank-and-file desk worker.   
When it comes time for the annual Christmas party, she’s pleased to see that her Secret Santa, Raquel, is delighted with the voucher for cocktail-mixing lessons and holds her hand up awkwardly when Raquel insists on congratulating whoever was responsible. For the past several years, Victoria has been responsible for getting a Christmas present for Mr 47 on behalf of her and Diana, and she’s always found that vouchers for lessons in random little skills – drumming, yoga, massages – have gone down well with him.   
She’s even more pleased to find out that Keith, who got her for the game, clearly had no idea what to get her, other than a slight belief that she might be religious – she figures this is to do with her necklace and the fact that she mentioned she’d been home-schooled for a time – and has gifted her a small cactus in a pot with the slogan ‘Smile! Jesus Loves You!’.

And so, Victoria is walking back to her flat clutching her new gift when this attempt happens. She’s been aware of the man tailing her for the past three blocks but has tried her best to ignore him in the hopes that she won’t have to deal with this at Christmas. A quick glance at him in a shop window – black gloves, clenched fists, concealed weapon on person – tells her this is not going to be the case. Victoria mutters some words that would make Keith seriously rethink his choice of gift for her and ducks into an alleyway. 

“Victoria Kavanaugh,” the man drawls, seemingly unaware of just how clichéd the words coming from his mouth are.

“Yes?” Victoria sighs, hoping the obvious irritation in her voice will make him rethink his decision to follow her.

“Couple of years ago now, a couple of guys I knew ran into a spot of trouble trying to haul your sorry ass across the country,” he explains, “Course, back then, you had that creepy bald fuck looking out for you. I don’t see him anywhere now, girlie.”

“That’s the point, you sack of shit,” Victoria snarls. 

The man pauses and looks around as though searching for a suspiciously shiny head. It’s enough time.

By the time someone finds him in the alley, with a small cactus lodged in his windpipe, Victoria Kavanaugh has disappeared, and Nicola Ballantine has started a job at a call center that deals with Kronstadt-brand microwave ovens. She’s good at calming down customers who complain that their ready-meals have come out somehow frozen and on fire at the same time, and working through the endless pages of the instruction manual with older callers – in fact, she thinks to herself, as she talks Mr Janus through the language settings, she sometimes wonders what it would be like to really fail at something.

By the next call, she regrets that.

“Good afternoon, Miss Kavanaugh,” comes an irritatingly smooth voice from the other end of the line.

Nicola – no, Victoria – adjusts her headset and accesses the building’s floorplans.

“Good afternoon sir,” she replies, “How may I help you?”

“I come from an organization interested in acquiring your services. We have been made aware that you possess a set of skills that my associates find extremely useful, and whilst we would never normally directly stoop to such dirty measures ourselves, recent events that you may be aware of have caused us to reconsider our stance on employing someone of your…background. If you come downstairs to the lobby, you will remain unarmed and join our employment. If not…I will join you on the fourth floor, where you currently are, and will regrettably make sure this conversation never happened. Do you understand me?”

Throughout this little speech, Victoria has been typing up an email to her boss explaining that she will regrettably have to terminate her contract with them due to unforeseen circumstances. She has also been making faces at both her cubicle neighbors that say, in the language universally known by all call-center workers, ‘I’ve got an absolute nightmare on my hands’. It’s not an inaccurate summary of the situation.

“Certainly sir, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you on this occasion,” Victoria says, “Thank you and goodbye!” 

He doesn’t join her on the fourth floor. 

In fact, it takes quite a while for him to get onto any floor, or at least for the response team to peel his remains from underneath the lift.

The next one to come along, an employee of Amos Dexter, brother of Blake, is at least a little smarter than the rest, ambushing Victoria and taking her necklace. It at least shows he’s read up on her. Unfortunately, his reading is several years out of date: on her eighteenth birthday, Victoria had the isotope injected directly into her system. She keeps the necklace on now as more of an emotional attachment, which is why when someone forcibly removes it, she doesn’t react well. At all.

She very nearly doesn’t leave the area in time, because after she disposes of this new body, she cries so hard she throws up.

And so as Nina Belikova, convenience store cleaner, trudges home from another shift, she can’t quite bring herself to care that the lock on her door, once again, has been busted open.

What she does find herself caring about is that her tiny little studio apartment is covered with the still-cooling bodies of what looks like a small wetworks squad. And in the middle of this horrible little tableau sits a nun. A very well-armed nun.

“They were Stallion Armaments, by the way,” the nun offers by way of an explanation, “You’re welcome.”

This is all clearly perfectly normal business to the nun, so Victoria thanks her and offers her something to drink. The nun accepts the offer of a cup of coffee and introduces herself as LaSandra Dixon.

“I work with the ICA,” LaSandra says, “As a matter of fact, a couple of years ago, I had a bit of a run-in with a certain relative of yours. Left my team dead and me in a coma for three months.”

“Sorry about that,” Victoria says, as though she has any real control over who Mr 47 does or doesn’t kill.

“Oh, there are no hard feelings here,” LaSandra says, “I was trying to kill him too, and anyway, I’m not here to kill you. I mostly work with the recruitment department these days. Which brings me to this file I have here. We don’t have any actual records on you – Burnwood was damn thorough on that account – but what we do have is some recovered footage and statements from the roof of Blackwater Park that night. Eleven armed guards and one medical professional attempt to restrain one teenage girl. The girl kills them all in less than a minute. You’ve got a talent.”

“I’m good at a lot of things,” Victoria says, “I can whistle the entirety of 99 Luftballons but I haven’t gone on America’s Got Talent.”

This gets a laugh.

“I’m not saying you have to join us,” LaSandra says, “I’m not saying you have to kill for us. You know as well as I do that we’ve got plenty of people working for us that never see active combat. But what we’ve got for you beats getting jumped every six months by some random goon. What do you say?”

Victoria takes a deep breath. 

“I’d like a high rate of commission,” she says in her firmest voice, “I’d like the choice to refuse contracts, particularly contracts relating to Amos Dexter and the Dexter Corporation, as well as Stallion Armaments, for what I think should be obvious reasons. And I would like full transparency as to who my targets are and why I’m being asked to…deal with them. And a healthcare plan.”

It’s not that she necessarily wants this life. She doesn’t agree with Project ViKa’s assessment that this is all she was ever good for. Unfortunately, she is clearly in the minority opinion about this. 

If this life is going to happen to her, it’s going to happen on her own terms.

Travis can fuck himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Come on, she's Jason Bourne but a teenage girl and the writers are just going to sleep on her like that?
> 
> Her last name and the project that created her are taken from an interview with a gaming magazine that called her Vika once.
> 
> The ending is rushed because it's late and I've got work tomorrow.


End file.
